The Ambassador of Ethiopia in Uganda, H.E Alemtsehay Meseret has condemned Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) for re-starting fighting in the Northern of the country despite government’s calls for peaceful resolution of the conflict.
In a press statement explaining the state of the conflict, the Ambassador said the group, which was designated as a terrorist organization by the Ethiopian Parliament, must be condemned and held accountable for re-igniting war.
It should be noted that the Northern Ethiopia conflict broke out on November 4, 2020 as a result of TPLF’s attacks on the Northern Command of National Defense Forces of Ethiopia and the neighboring regions of Amhara and Afar.
At the same time, the Ambassador says, the war did not stop because TPLF had been turning its back to the calls and confidence building measures that had been taken by the Government for the peaceful settlement of the Conflict.
“Instead, the TPLF Group engaged itself to attacks and invasions, forced conscription of the youth and use of Child soldiers, using the worn-out human wave as a military strategy, colluding with internal and external anti-peace elements to incite violence in the country and coordinated deceptions and disinformation methods to play as if it is a victim as well as ridiculing the AU-led peace process until recently,” explains Ambassador Alemtesehey.
“The TPLF re-ignited the conflict in Ethiopia by re-launching third round attack on the neighboring region of Amhara on August 24, 2022. The TPLF, whose preparation for the potential hostilities were disclosed, re-launched the attack despite the Ethiopian Government revealed its readiness to negotiate without precondition and the FDRE Main peace Committee unveiled Peace Proposal in which it expressed its readiness for a negotiated ceasefire, an in-depth political dialogue for a lasting settlement and addressing pending issues through the national Dialogue.”
“However, the TPLF responded negatively and reaffirmed its being a national security threat to the country. The TPLF group has been abusing the government’s efforts for peaceful settlement of the conflict repeatedly. When the government declared a unilateral ceasefire on June 2021, the TPLF escalated the conflict into the Amhara and Afar regions where it committed horrendous crimes on the civilians such as extra-judicial killings and executions, rapes and other forms of sexual violence, inflicting body harms, causing immeasurable property and infrastructure damages, destruction and looting, causing a mass displacement of the peoples in the region as well as targeting religious sites and using them as military camps and fighting sheds,” she adds.
She says during the time, the government carried out its constitutional responsibility of protecting the people by liberating the TPLF occupied territories in Amhara and Afar regions and relived the people from the TPLF’s atrocities.
There after, she says, the Government declared indefinite humanitarian truce on March 2022 and expedited humanitarian aid to Tigray, Afar and Amhara regions.
It should be also noted that the humanitarian truce helped the region to get a better flow of humanitarian aid, until the TPLF resumed its attack on August 24, 2022. The group’s track record of robbing and diverting humanitarian foods, trucks and fuels jeopardized the delivery of humanitarian assistance and exposed the people in the region to further suffering.
As such, Ambassador Alemtesehey says any sort of support given to the TPLF serves emboldening the group to further undermine the lives and peace of the people of Ethiopia in particular, and disrupting the stability in the region.
“The TPLF, which committed ineffable human right violations and grand-scale exploitation on Ethiopia for more than three decades, has staunch and bankrolled accomplices and sympathizers that tried to whitewash its atrocities and shift the blame on the Ethiopian government,” explains the Ambassador.
“The Ethiopian Government has been taking concrete measures against perpetrators of Human rights violations and this was reaffirmed in its commitment in implementing the recommendations of the Joint Investigation Team (JIT) of UNOHCHR and the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission through the Inter-Ministerial Task Force. However, the International Commission of Human Rights Experts in Ethiopia (ICHREE) was founded in a series of erroneous premises,” she adds.
She reiterates that the recent report of International Commission of Human Rights Experts in Ethiopia (ICHREE) is incomplete, incoherent, and unsubstantiated.
“It is a manifestly political statement issued under the guise of an ‘investigation report’, written in breach of all principles of professionalism, independence, impartiality,” she said.
Consequently, Alemtsehay notes that politically motivated statements and reports would not serve for a peaceful settlement for the Conflict.
She says, while reiterating that Ethiopia is committed to peaceful settlement of the conflict under the auspices of African Union and ensuring accountability for any human right violations, TPLF has to be held accountable for provoking the war, which it formally admitted, and reigniting and escalating the war.